Education as infrastructure: How learning powers progress

This conversation will bring together perspectives from education, health, and agriculture to explore how investments in learning ripple across sectors. From teachers in classrooms to community health workers and agricultural extension workers, many of the people responsible for delivering essential services rely on strong systems for learning, training, and continuous development to do their jobs well. Room to Read, Last Mile Health, and One Acre Fund will draw on their experiences working across different sectors to examine what these systems have in common. How do we equip frontline workers with the knowledge and skills they need, not just once, but throughout their careers? What can education practitioners learn from health and agriculture, and vice versa? And where could shared approaches help strengthen learning at scale? The discussion will also consider a broader tension: learning is essential to achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals, yet education and training are often designed, funded, and measured within sector-specific silos. What might become possible if funders, governments, and practitioners treated learning capacity as a core part of the infrastructure required for lasting development? What to expect A cross-sector panel conversation bringing together practical experience from education, health, and agriculture. Panelists will share lessons from investing in teachers, frontline workers, and adult learning, while exploring where approaches to training and learning can travel across sectors. Participants will be invited to consider the common challenges behind seemingly different development goals and discuss opportunities to build stronger learning systems across them. Who this is for This session is for funders, policymakers, education and development practitioners, social entrepreneurs, and systems leaders interested in how learning can strengthen frontline delivery, livelihoods, community outcomes, and progress across the Sustainable Development Goals. What you will get out of it A broader perspective on education and learning as infrastructure for development Insights into how education, health, and agriculture organizations approach frontline learning and capacity building Lessons on strengthening teachers, frontline workers, and adult learners at scale Opportunities to identify shared approaches across traditionally separate sectors New questions about how philanthropy and development actors can invest in learning as a foundation for wider systems change Hosted by Last Mile Health One Acre Fund Room to Read